Beautiful Minds: Outtakes 05: Heartbreak
by Soledad
Summary: A short scene taking place before Outtakes 01, in order to answer some questions.


**Beautiful Minds – Outtakes**

 **by Soledad**

 **Fandom:** Sherlock BBC/Whoniverse AU

 **Genre:** Family, Drama.

 **Rating:** G, suitable for all.

 **Series:** Beautiful Minds

 **Timeframe:** Set right before BBC Sherlock's 3rd season

 **Disclaimer:** Both Sherlock and Torchwood belong to the BBC. Sherlock Holmes also belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Only the weird crossover idea belongs to me. No copyright infringement intended and no money made.

 **Author's notes:** For disclaimer, rating, etc. see Outtakes 01. Also, please consider the big, honking AU label.

These Season 3 AU ficlets aren't written in chronological order. They sometimes overlap, sometimes tell the same events from different POVs, sometimes even the events themselves are a bit different. Everything is still set in the BM'verse, with all that it entails, but I do use some of the original dialogue from the episodes. Reading my story "Convergences" might help to understand the AU aspects better.

This particular story is set shortly before Sherlock's return and tries to answer a few questions raised by Outtakes 01.

* * *

 **Outtakes 05 – Heartbreak**

Ianto heard from the intel-gathering mission gone terribly wrong, of course. He was part of his father's wide-spread net – even if only an unofficial part. Even though his true connection to the shadow lord of the United Kingdom was still a well-kept secret. So, naturally, as soon as he was done with the analysis of the newest intel regarding the terrorist attack threatening London, he hurried to the private hospital where members and close acquaintances of the Holmes family were usually treated.

"How is he?" he asked Anthea who was sitting in the waiting room, BlackBerry chemically glued to her palm. One advantage of a private hospital was that they allowed the use of mobile phones, as long as they were specially shielded – which Anthea's was, of course.

She looked up from her phone, although her thumbs kept moving, finishing the message without looking at is. "Not well. The doctors expect Captain Harkness to pass over within the hour. His injuries are too grave."

"I didn't mean Jack," Ianto said. "How is _he_?"

Anthea turned back to her phone. "As it can be expected. I wouldn't go in there if I were you."

"Fortunately, you aren't me," Ianto replied. "Which room?"

"Number twelve. Don't say I haven't warned you," and with that, she ignored him again.

Ianto hesitated for a moment, not really sure if he should knock or not. On the one hand, he didn't want to disturb what might have been his father's last chance to say his farewells to the man who meant more to him than he would probably be willing to admit. On the other hand, he knew that his father didn't deal well with losses. No Holmes ever did. So he carefully pushed the door open and entered the sick room without making any noise.

The sight greeting him wasn't one to induce hope. His father's big, virile, devastatingly handsome chief of security looked like a corpse already, hooked up to more machines than one would think was possible, his numerous bandages soaked with blood. But he was still breathing, flat, laboured breaths, with that soft, gurgling, wet sound on each inhale that was the surest sign that it was going to the end with him.

Ianto knew it sounded worse than it actually was. He knew that Jack Harkness wasn't in actual pain – he was well beyond that already. The gurgling noise came from the fact that the muscles in the back of his throat have loosened and he was no longer swallowing and clearing the saliva away as he normally would. But it still _sounded_ as if he were drowning, and Ianto remembered how little the medical knowledge helped when one was sitting at the deathbed of a friend… or more than just a friend.

He had gone through the same with Wesley after Canary Wharf had been bombed to hell by the eco-terrorists, after all. It never got any easier.

It clearly didn't help his father, either. The always impeccable Mycroft Holmes was perching on the edge of his bodyguard's/sometimes lover's bed, dishevelled to the degree Ianto had never seen him before, holding to the cold, clammy hand of Jack's with both of his own, with such raw pain on his face that it physically hurt to see.

"Don't you dare to leave me!" he was saying in a low, desperate voice when Ianto entered. "What am I supposed to do without you?"

Perhaps he'd just admitted to himself for the first time ever what Jack truly meant for him.

His despair seemed to reach the dying man one last time; Jack opened his bright blue eyes, now clouded by the amount of industrial strength painkillers, the only help the doctors could still provide, and smiled weakly.

"You will… manage," he whispered. "You… always do…"

Then he looked in Ianto's direction, perhaps feeling his presence with the unnatural clearness the dying sometimes acquire, and added. "Take care of him… for me…"

"I will," Ianto promised simply, without going any closer.

In this last moment he was a mere intruder anyway.

Jack's eyes fell closed again, as if he no longer had the strength to keep them open; he most likely hadn't. "I am sorry," he said at last, and between that breath and the next one that never came, he was gone.

Now Ianto did cross the room with soft, noiseless steps and laid a supporting hand upon his father's stooped shoulder.

"Tad," he said simply. Nothing else.

Nothing else was needed.

He felt his father's shoulder shake under his hand with suppressed sobs for a moment or two. Then Mycroft Holmes leaned forward, touched his lips to the blue and cooling ones of Jack Harkness – and stood. With a supreme effort born of sheer willpower, he gathered his wits around him and looked at his son with dry, emotionless eyes.

"Well," he said, and his voice was as steady as always. "This is the way of things. All lives end. All hearts are broken. I told you, my boy: caring is not an advantage."

"I beg to differ," Ianto said softly.

That earned him a superior Homesian eyebrow. "Do you? Can you name just one case in which caring proved advantageous to any Holmes? Look at Sherlock, where caring has led him! Look at _me!"_

"Well, it's a good thing, then, that I was raised as a Jones," Ianto replied.

"In what way is _that_ supposed to be a good thing?" his father asked disdainfully, still unhappy with the fact that his only son had been denied him for twenty years.

"It means I can do things for you that you can't do on your own," Ianto said. "Mourning, for starters. Go back to Whitehall, Tad. Bury yourself in work until you get better. I'll take care for everything here."

"Anthea can do it," his father protested.

Ianto shook his head. "She isn't family; and you need her at work."

For a moment, his father looked as if he'd keep protesting; but then he gave up as always when Ianto was right.

"Will I see you tonight?" he asked.

"Of course," Ianto replied. "I have some disadvantageous caring to do at your house."

~The End~


End file.
